Hey guys, I just wanted to write to say hello with a fun cultural update. I don’t do this often, but something pretty fun happened this week and I thought you might all like to learn a bit through my experience.
Our team was invited to learn the sport, Pelota Vasca, which just translates to Basque ball or on Wikipedia, Basque Pelota. It’s a really famous sport here in the Basque country in Spain.
There’s a professional player along with a group of guys who run a business of teaching the sport and helping to expand its influence. The sport can be kind of described in American terms as a mix of squash/racket ball and handball. Two or four players hit against a wall and the game-play is much like racket ball. The catch is, you hit the ball with your hand. (pun fully intended)
Anyway, this business is doing some publicity, so a local news crew came by to record it and our team was on the news. It was kind of a fun “Let’s watch the foreigners try to play our sport” piece 
You’ll see my teammate Brendan shaking off his hand after hitting the ball. That’s because the ball is very hard (almost like a baseball but smaller) and even with padded gloves, it hurts! The professional (Fernando) showed us his hands and all of his knuckles were sort of misshaped and bent or overgrown from all the fractures. Most pros have pinky fingers that are bent almost to a 90 degree angle from all the breaks, and even they wear pads!
So, we were on the news in Pamplona. For those of you that always wanted to hear me speak Spanish, this is your opportunity.
Click the link below to play the video. They’ll make you watch a 20 second ad, and then you can click forward a bit until you get to 2:55 or 3:00 minutes. You’ll get to watch our team as well as practice your Spanish a bit!
You’ll see me, Brendan, Christine, Minhee, and Dominic.
http://www.eitb.com/videos/television/navarra-directo/detalle/668579/navarra-directo-27-mayo/
-Brendan is the other guy that’s my age. He’s a tent-making teacher who helps with the ministry
-Christine is wearing all black. She’s also a tent-making teacher who helps with the ministry
-Minhee is a foreign exchange student from South Korea. She’s wearing the blue Gap shirt. We invited her as well since she’s another foreigner that’s involved in our ministry.
-Dom is wearing the Florida shirt. He’s the pastor and leader of the ministry here.
